


light the spark

by LadyAllana



Series: to time [3]
Category: Black Panther (2018), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M, Heavy Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Time Travel Fix-It, Tony Stark Has Issues, so many of them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-26
Updated: 2018-09-26
Packaged: 2019-07-17 23:49:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16106324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyAllana/pseuds/LadyAllana
Summary: Tony needs vibranium.That's the plot.





	light the spark

**Author's Note:**

> 1) I’m not the Russo Brothers, it’s impossible to encompass all that I want to say in a single story. So, I’m going to branch out a bit if possible. Certain storylines, that aren’t really vital to the plot of “nothing” which is mostly a Tony/Loki/Nebula angst!fest will get their own one-shots. Kind of like DVD extras? We’ll see how it goes. Like I’m pretty sure there are cheesy scenes with random characters I want in the main story but there are some parts, mainly surrounding the ‘new’ Avengers that just don’t fit right now. The main reason for this might be, I think, is that these characters just don’t have enough (or at all) screen time with each other.  
> 2) So, I’m all for fandom ships, but I also have a crush on Lupita? I’m sure many will understand. Right now, this ship is one of the most cannon ones in the MCU and sue me but I like them a lot. So here is a little interlude, because Tony needs vibranium for his suits…as always, no proper timeline, no proper plot, no proper anything but lots and lots of FEELINGS.

_For then, however drear and dark,_

_My soul was suited to thy sky;_

_One star alone shot forth a spark_

_To prove thee---not Eternity._

It’s Nakia he meets first. It’s impossible to locate the exact location of Wakanda without alerting the locals and it is mere chance that the future fiancée of the future king is at his doorstep, posing as some grad student. It’s almost easy planning a conference for the political studies department at the university, showcasing Pepper’s leadership skills in an uplifting motivational speech about female power figures in male-dominated fields. It is just as easy to choose Nakia as one of the lucky ones for a Stark internship though she has been there for but 2 months.

 

She refuses the offer.

 

He won’t let her.

 

He can be scary once he is in pursuit of something and perhaps it’s not the best to make this much effort this quick with a spy involved. Nakia has been trained to see something like this coming. Tony doesn’t know much about the War Dogs except their purpose and the vibranium glowing behind the skin. It’s exceptionally easy to locate any colleagues Nakia might have because he is specifically looking for it. In fact, he was looking for any random spy Wakanda might have around the world when the closest search led him to her.

 

 It’s a good thing that he has near perfect memory, especially when it comes to numbers because he no longer has any access to the research he had started with Bruce with Ultron and that went several thousand pages deep after the accords, or Bruce to help him with it. He is slowly coming around, but Tony simply can’t wait.

 

Pepper has been nothing but devoted these past months and though she has spent long years by his side he is so very afraid that he will wake up to an empty bed – though he is the one making her do that most mornings out of insomnia and insufficient time- that this much madness is finally going to be too much for her. He gave up everything to come here, gave up her and their unborn child. He thought that he was ready to give it all up for once and all until he saw her again because there could possibly be no worse outcome. He had to go all in, that was the only way.

 

Tony has barely met Nakia, but he knows that she was about to become the Queen of Wakanda before Thanos came. He knows that she is untamable and yet devoted to her king all the more for it. How can she not be both when they have been the one for each other for so long?

 

The fact is, above any similarity and before any romantic misconception, he simply needs to gain access to vibranium, to any kind of technology their country has to offer because he is simply not fast enough.

 

This is their pact. They are past mistakes, past regrets. Whatever precautions they might have had- and considering them it doesn’t mean much at all- are things of the past, or in this case the future. He can’t deal with disappointment or heartbreak, can’t hesitate, can’t stutter and can’t ever stop.

 

Even if it means losing Pepper.

 

_But he can’t lose her_.

 

Not again.

 

Not ever.

 

She has been a careful if not cautious accomplice to his shenanigans so far, too busy to deal with the company to properly deal with him.

 

He is tiring her to an early grave just not to lose her. He is being intentionally harmful, he knows it. The ring is at their nightstand back at home. Actually bought before he came back to change the timeline, back when he had realized that he was going to die soon and that she was going to be the only woman he has ever and was ever going to love. Of course, it wasn’t supposed to see the light of the day, he wasn’t going to try and tie her down to a dying man but now he has to see it on her finger again no matter how early it is, or he is going to go crazy.

 

But first, he needs vibranium.

 

He can only hope Pepper will stay with him through the oncoming storm.

 

Talking about Pepper, she is sitting in the next room with three chosen interns, two of which will go to departments he couldn’t care less about at the moment. He specifically told her that Nakia needs to be close, perhaps Natasha can keep an eye on her during her stay in Stark Industries and Jarvis will make sure to keep a close eye on her to stop any secrets from leaking to the current king of Wakanda, a man Tony doesn’t know and can’t trust under the circumstances as they stand.

 

He can see through the parting glass that she is half-way done convincing Nakia, whose stance is a lot more comfortable than the spy straight one she had when the other two girls excitedly dragged her in. The other girls are starstruck already. Though Pepper has been surrounded by unfounded rumors, as she had been the last time about her sudden promotion, its obvious to any room she walks in that she really is a commanding presence, the genius behind his handsome face.

 

Tony spent reckless years building bombs following his father’s legacy and left almost all executive decisions to Obadiah Stane. Whatever that came to his table, went through Pepper’s watchful eyes first and after. She carried all the paperwork through Afghanistan and carried him through the train wreck after. Tony wants to scream that to the world sometimes. That he is just a rich pompous ass of a mechanic who happens to be really good at choosing assistants. He was never the one running Stark and he is not about to start now.

 

He couldn’t do it even if he wanted to.

 

Pepper gives Nakia a hopeful, encouraging smile and he can see the doubt of hope in the girl’s eyes blooming all the way from his place hiding in the corner watching them like a creep. She is intrigued.

 

She had been one of the key factors, opening Wakanda to the world in the future and T’Challa’s chief ambassador to the United Nations. A diplomat more than she will ever be a homestay wife, restless and powerful, she is the driving force behind the king’s foreign policy and she is the one influencing the young prince’s decisions right now with his genius sister still so young and with no threat of a usurping cousin on the horizon.

 

He holds his breath and counts to ten before going through the door. He hasn’t been trained for this. Yes, he has always been calculating and smart, but he is loud, boisterous, this spy game is not for him. Natasha at least he knows somewhat, at least he can collect evidence and go along with what he has seen and heard through the years, with her reaction to Shield and Hydra, her fierce need to protect Barton and later all of them once she called them her team. Her own. With Nakia he knows nothing but her passion for world peace and diplomacy and the fierce blades adorning inside her seams to protect a king who needs no protection.

 

Pepper is still busy telling the other girls about their prospective jobs. “-to the advertising department and I know we can do great things together…” Once she sees him, she gives a sideways glance to Nakia. “This is Tony. You are going to be the lucky one I’m afraid.”

 

She quickly shakes her hand and gets up with the two other girls, before she can see and has to face the look of alarm on Nakia’s face.

 

Keeping herself guilt-free, he can only be thankful to her.

 

As she passes by, she puts a reassuring hand on his arm, a worried teary smile on her face. She has realized that he hasn’t come to the bed last night.

 

“Solid work.” he tells her, because yeah, no time for emotions.

 

She doesn’t say anything but calls for Happy to tag along. “Girls, you’ll be happy to meet-“

 

Inside the room, the shades suddenly darken and Nakia moves to stand up. Jarvis can detect the vibranium behind her lip. The silent alarm rings in his head, in the headset- Jarvis will be hard to lose again but he must do what he must to set certain things into motion- because she is also wearing some sort of bracelet. It’s not the Kimono beads Shuri was producing for T’Challa but it’s very much vibranium and can be dangerous.

 

The first thought he has, as it has been since the attack on New York, is _“Not with Pepper in the vicinity.”_

 

These days he puts Pepper in boardrooms willingly with Loki himself.

 

“Mr. Stark, It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

 

She has the perfect Mid-Western accent, it’s eerie because she never used it during public speeches she gave frequently after Wakanda was reintroduced to the UN.

 

A spy through and through, and though she has no red ledger that he knows of, she is capable of being just as dangerous as Natasha.

 

Still, bravado has always been his thing. He is nothing if he can’t hide his anxieties behind heavy banter and unnecessary jokes.

 

Nakia here has long hair, a better fit for this country’s beauty standards, straightened, probably with those nightmare devices Pepper wakes up to use at dawn. He has kindly offered to invent the same thing but faster for her before which she politely declined, saying that he had no need to cost many capable people their jobs quite yet.

 

Now that he thinks about it, it was probably his bloodshot eyes and the fact that he had been neck deep in another project that wouldn’t allow him to sleep in his own bed.

 

The Nakia he had briefly met before in passing had been in a regal red dress, with heels thinner than the death traps Pepper preferred. Hair kept short as it was fit for a warrior and almost as a defiance against the royal customs she would have had to uphold.

 

This girl in front of him is young, only a couple of years older than Peter was- he is safe and sound with his guardians still, Tony has to remind himself- and likely younger than what she claims to be today.  She is wearing dark jeans and sneakers to this meeting she obviously didn’t want to be in but had to keep up whatever pretenses she has to keep for her mission as a War Dog.

 

“I’m going to cut the chase and keep this short.”

 

She sits a bit straighter then and he can see that she was brought up with a regal bearing, or perhaps had it from birth and they had been destined to be together all along.

 

T’Challa had joked that they met as children and he chased her for decades. Tony had answered that he had done the same. The heavy air of betrayal was among them. The question of Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes unanswered though they both knew.

 

Nakia and Pepper had started an easy conversation then about some children or other, saving them from their misery and the unspoken murdered fathers.

 

That was one less thing in common between them now, bringing the tally …well, pretty low. So yes, Nakia it was.

 

“Jarvis, bring up the screens.”

 

Wakanda’s position on an African map popped up in blue. Along with Cap’s shield, his research on vibranium and lastly, T’Challa following his father on a visit to Brussels.

 

As it always is with Natasha, it’s a fascinating moment to see all traces of an untraceable mask fall from the spy’s face, leaving behind a calculating cold gaze that was trained to keep any kind of shock or fear at bay. Suddenly the shy, timid college student is turned into a feline, cunning figure that would have made Tony take a step back – out of fear or respect- before Thanos. Alas, time is long past for such things and he is so hard to impress these days.

 

“Wakanda is protected extremely well. It’s possible for me to go in, yes, but I’m not another imperialist country trying to usurp your reserves.”

 

“No, you are a capitalist billionaire. There is not much difference.”

 

**

 

“I need to speak with Prince T’Challa. You can arrange a meeting of course, all under your control. As many sexy red female warriors as you want.”

 

The mention of the Dora Milaje gives Nakia a pause, but what she finds more interesting is that Stark wants to meet up with the prince and not the King. T’Challa is formidable, she should know, but he is not the one calling the shots, not for a long while yet.

 

She does not trust this man, who has tricked her and forced her hand until she found herself on his turf. This man who, though known as a superhero by many, hasn’t shown her a single good quality yet. His CEO and lover she can respect but Stark is just another white man in a long line of white rich entitled men who seek a way in to steal the resources her country has to offer. She wants Wakanda to integrate into the modern world, mostly to help other people more than finding recognition for its solitary success, but whatever process they might have to follow for it, it has no place for another outsider seeking his own self-gain. It must come from within, as she has been trying to tell T’Challa for the past how many years since he has stolen her heart.

 

It’s hard for Nakia to juggle between her sense of duty to her country and her love for the somewhat wayward prince. Nakia has no right to shield or protect T’Challa from any potential harm that might be beneficial for their country. But she is not sure that she will be honorable enough should she have to choose between protecting the man she loves or doing her duty as commanded.

 

That’s why she can’t ever be one of the Dora Milaje.

 

That’s why she tried so hard to distance herself from the prince who is so determined to follow her to the distant edges of the world.  

 

 Stark doesn’t seem to be aware of that at least, but he is aware of who she is and if she has to bet on it, he somehow knows that theirs isn’t a regular king servant relationship. If anything Nakia is the one making the calls the most of the time, this is a fact she struggles with daily, knowing that one day he will be her sovereign.

 

But if Stark had known of T’Challa’s unhealthy habit of randomly visiting her dorm room at odd hours every couple of weeks, he wouldn’t have gone to such charades to get her to come to him.

 

She hates being short-sided.

 

“Why do you want vibranium? For your weapons?”

 

“I’m not my father.” His tone is harsh, almost impatient. She has hit on an open nerve. But he reigns it in quickly.

 

Why does he need to do this urgently?

 

“There is a threat… that none of us will see coming. It comes for you, it comes for me.”

 

He takes a deep breath.

 

“It comes for Pepper.”

 

Perhaps he really does know that she is willing to do absolutely anything for T’Challa.

 

 “It will come for him as well. We need to work together to prevent it.”

 

 

**

 

 

When she finally comes back home, hopefully unfollowed as an act of trust by the crazy billionaire, unless she is being followed by satellite which is entirely possible. T’Challa is already resting on her small bed, her Macbook on his lap watching the reruns of some ball game or the other.

 

It has been hard, these last couple of months, with him on a series of diplomatic missions getting ready to carry his father's mantle and her following the lead of a rogue professor here. It’s moments like these that give her hope that T’Challa will endure all her wild streaks, that despite the worries of his father he will be his own man. It’s not a secret that Nakia’s political ambitions anger both of their families so, especially when there are so many eligible girls who would make better wives, better mothers, better queens one day.

 

They both remain silent as she sheds her coat and shoes. He slowly sets the computer down to the floor and makes himself more comfortable on the bed as she goes to the bathroom, comes back and changes into some PJs. She doesn’t know if its luck that has her noisy roommate out today, or the man currently in her bed, or the man who is expecting a call in the next few hours.

 

Being anxious, caught off guard, is such a tiring business.

 

She crawls into the bed, settling her body as close as possible not to jostle him too much. Putting her face to his neck, taking a deep breath in of his spicy fresh scent, both remain silent still.

 

 It took them a long time to get here, even when all that stood between them was Nakia herself. He always claimed that she thought too much on it, made a too big of a deal out of nothing during their teenage years, while she claimed that he was shallow and couldn’t possibly understand.

 

Understand what? She didn’t even know herself anymore. She thought later that what he said was true, that she was paranoid, overthinking everything. It was her paranoia that made her go through all the trials of a warrior, that made her what she is today.

 

T’Challa is idly playing with her hair, half of it extensions she got the first day she got here as a help from some upperclassmen to help her fit in. Nakia had always had a talent for languages but fitting in, not sticking out like a sore thumb is something she still struggles with. She met him that way, sneaking into the places she shouldn’t and being entirely too loud about it. Messing housework, messing class, messing even with Okoye. Order, silence…as much as she wants those are never things she can give to him. To T’Challa who loved spending time in the library as much as getting his hands dirty, who actually read philosophers and watched documentaries for fun. Who was being brought up to be an influential political leader one day.

 

He was taught how to set order, peace, harmony among their people and she somehow always managed to take all out of his life. It broke her heart that she rushed into destroy every peaceful moment, like now. She didn’t want to move, to get up, to speak, she didn’t want Stark to be their reality.

 

His arm finds a comfortable place across her stomach. He takes a deep breath in, not caring about the fake hair that is threatening to suffocate him.

 

Maybe, maybe this can wait until morning.

 

**

 

It’s a crippling thing, this urgency that he feels with every passing second. Most of the time he spends alone coding and coding until he can’t move his fingers from the pain and after his voice grows hoarse when he starts dictating to Jarvis. Not to mention that everything he is doing feels half a betrayal to his beloved A.I.

 

The rest he divides between Pepper – mostly public functions- and the blue alien duo who technically live in Norway but use his basement. Loki, who has even less patience for trivial human stuff has suggested barging in months ago, eyes still so very alien though he has shorter hair and also wears freaking polo shirts with jeans. But Tony knows that this is the one trust he must build.  Like him, Loki knows like he does that comradeship is built in war, in meetings in dark rooms, by laying your life on the line for the cause of the other.

 

Divided the Avengers fell.

 

Divided Asgard was destroyed.

 

Tony needs every pair of hands he can get against Thanos, and he needs them to be there out of a sense of common duty, of trust in each other and not only out of necessity.

 

Stephen Strange haunts his dreams nightly, sacrificing everything for him even though they didn’t know or trust each other.

 

“Tony, there was no other way.” No other way with friends by his side. Alone, always alone ever since he was a child, left by neglectful parents, alone on top of the world, alone on top of the world, alone at school, alone in the God damn cave, alone in his suit. Alone even with the two solitary aliens who took up his cause. Alone in his bed with his girlfriend who can never fully comprehend the gravity of the situation and God how he wishes she never has to. No, he needs the Avengers back.

 

Natasha, Clint, and Bruce are already here. Soon will come Rogers and the others. Soon he will have to raise Ultron. But, no, there are lines he has to draw, fates he has to link.

 

There is no other way, no other person but him to play the God, the three unforgiving sisters who cut whatever thread that must be cut. Maybe it’s Loki who is rubbing off on him now that he can appreciate his intelligence and skills in a debate, making him think he is somehow above it all.

 

Maybe he is just done with it all, damn all the consequences.

 

But maybe not, because he thinks that he wouldn’t be this deadly afraid in every single breath if that were the case.

 

 **

 

He makes breakfast because of course he does. It’s the procrastination that has made her sleep this late- after her usual run time that is.

 

The clock shows 7 am, they have a 10 am appointment at Stark’s New York building. She can feel it in every beat of her heart, every breath that she is about to shatter the calm of their lives irretrievably.

 

Does she have the right to do it? Is she important enough to do it? These questions have hunted her ever since she has agreed to be with him. It sounded silly to her, that any word that came out of her mouth could have possible consequences for her whole country.

 

Now they might for the whole world.

 

“Baby…baby we need to talk.”

 

**

 

He spends another sleepless night, half of it video chatting with Loki who is neck deep in some grimoire or the other and can’t teleport himself to Tony’s workshop here to annoy him with ridiculously good quality coffee.         

 

Still, he must say that the vision of T’Challa with jeans and an earring is marginally more shocking that Loki with a bun that first day back on Earth. Loki, he can expect pretty much anything from at this point, T’Challa, on the other hand, he has never imagined out of a traditional dress shirt.

 

He and Nakia come in at five past. Though she is respectfully one step behind t all times, he wraps a hand around her waist when she goes to introduce them to each other, obviously an open deviance to an ongoing argument between them.

 

A fast whispering tongue that they think he can’t understand is non-stop between them and so is Jarvis, translating a tad more accurately than Google in his ear.

 

T’Challa he knew was a stoic. This young man seems much lighter, unburdened. Tony doesn’t have to imagine the weight of a dead father on a man’s shoulders. It must have been harder to not being able to save him. Tony spent billions of dollars and countless hours to remake his father just to ease off the never-ending weight on his chest slowly suffocating him.

 

Suffice to say that it wasn’t enough.

 

This younger T’Challa, the prince, is free of the weight of the crown, and even the mantle of the Black Panther though his body obviously shows the hardships of many missions. Still, he doesn’t seem as at ease in his body as his girlfriend and if Tony has to bet on it, he wouldn’t be as confident in his black spandex as a man on a revenge mission.

 

It’s eerie, none of his Avengers came to him this “innocent” before, except the kid who he still can’t bear to think about. Back then the purest ones had been Steve and Thor, both seasoned warriors, held up by unbreakable moral codes. Even now meeting his friends before the supposed timelines none are left untouched by the evil they chose to or have been forced to fight against. For years he watched the shadows fall under Thor and Steve’s eyes, watched the hopeful smile fade from their faces, a feat he had thought impossible.

 

Tony had long believed them to be hopeless fools having survived what they did with unwavering optimism. Steve had come right out of a World War and Thor had just lost Loki, not to mention his long and eventful life that hade made huge skeptics of both his father and brother.

 

Thanos had even taken those puppy dog eyes from him.

 

So what did it make of Tony to do the same thing to the young man standing before him?

 

The harbinger of bad news, the destroyer of worlds.

 

He takes a deep breath in, many of which are being forced into lungs that expand by sheer spite these days.

 

_What the hell,_ he thinks, he is already damned without adding another broken soul to weight on his conscious anyway…

 

**

 

“…and?”

 

Five hours he has sat here. It’s obvious even to him that he needs a five hundred more to even grasp the basics of what he has just heard.

 

“What do you mean ‘ _and’_?!”

 

There is sweat upon Stark’s brow. A tiny line going down to his neck as if it were a lazy snail, leaving the traces of a thousand tears in its wake.

 

Nakia’s long fingernails are digging into his skin, those too a new development he isn’t comfortable with and really how funny it is that such small things can bother him so when there are so many more important things that he must face. They are leaving their marks there, red and white and if they were claws, it’s almost as if she knows that he is half ready to run out of here.

 

“What do you want from me?” he asks, his voice sounds to him as if there is a mile long tunnel between his mouth and ears.

 

“Want? I don’t want anything. What I need on the other hand- “

 

He feels distanced from his body as if the ice-cold fingers are not his but just a distant sensation of a snowy breeze upon his skin, as if its not him but the world that has moved from its axis. He is not sure if he is twitching or trembling. If he is angry or scared. It feels too surreal and yet far more real than anything he has ever encountered.

 

He watches his own hand as it gets out of Nakia’s grip as if it is an alien life form, what a hysterically funny though that is, and accepts the USB stick Stark is holding out to him.

 

It seems that survival does not need to be a conscious decision.

 

“-is everything.”

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
